メインメニュー

Missing Post Office UK talk event

Is there someone to whom you wish you could tell your thoughts,
even if you might never receive an answer?

This talk event introduces Missing Post Office,
the artist Saya Kubota’s work that receives and looks after letters
you want to write but don’t know where to send.

The MPO originally opened at the 2013 Art Setouchi Triennale
and is still in operation today on the small island of Awashima,
where over 7,000 letters are under the care of the postmaster Mr. Nakata.
The UK branch of MPO will open for a limited time only as part of
Kubota’s forthcoming solo exhibition at the Daiwa Foundation in January 2016.
The British postal system created by Rowland Hill was introduced to
Japan’s post offices by Hisoka Maejima at the time of the Meiji Restoration.
Both Japan and UK are island countries,
and beyond their parallel postal systems they share many strong links.
Letters collected can be read at the MPO UK during the exhibition period
and will eventually arrive at Awashima afterwards.
The MPOs invite you to post a letter, like a message in a bottle,
that will float on the sea of time.

A letter to anyone, anywhere, at any time,
which might one day arrive here with us,
and be washed ashore to you as the reader.

Saya Kubota (b.1987, Ibaraki, Japan) is a current artist-in-residence
at City & Guilds of London Art School and PhD candidate
at Tokyo University of the Arts.
Kubota’s practice revolves around memory and physical traces of the past,
which although they have seemingly altered in form or even to have disappeared,
are still sustained in the present time and space.
She gravitates towards invisible yet certain matters;
worn out teeth of a dead deer that once gorged the fruits of the land;
the presence of the moon visible only as a reflection of sunlight;
letters to someone who cannot be reached;
or an evocative mirage of burning incense.
Her historical and philosophical enquiries are materialised
in diverse works from tracing paper, oil painting, photography,
self-devised machines and installations to embellished minerals and porcelains.
She has taken part in many international group exhibitions in Tokyo,
New York, Hong Kong and elsewhere.
She is the winner of 2014 Terada Art Award.

MPO UK is able receive your letters from now until 22nd February 2016.
For those who wish to contribute, please send your stamped letters
to the address below having acknowledged the Q&A and details.